Cactus, cactuses, cacti...

When I was little, my favourite thing to do after school was grab a snack and a book and go play outside. And I don't just mean ride bikes and do sidewalk chalk. I mean go back into the wooded area in my backyard, climb trees, build tables and chairs with tree trunks and scraps that people had tossed back there (yes, I was allowed to play with a hammer and nails as a 7-year old), and spend all of my time with the plants and the trees.

Now that I live in the desert, there's something of a shortage of trees that are appropriate for fort-building, but cactus and succulents are never in short supply. I'd like to thank Sedona, Arizona for my newfound love of saguaro cacti; Joshua Tree National Park for paddle cacti, and Instagram for giving me the motivation to finally head to the nursery to pick out some cactus friends to grow at home. My obsession began almost exactly one year ago and since then, I've learned to propagate cactus, have harvested several straight from the desert, and just realized that I have no less than 15 cacti in my tiny apartment.

Last weekend, I popped out to Ventura to visit with my dad and since it was an extra long weekend, we got to spend about an hour tooling around the local nursery where I practically swooned at their selection of cacti for sale. We had to get a big cart, which I nearly filled with spiky pals before sanity took over and I whittled down my selections to just 3 tiny plants. They give me great joy and I've found that I take quite a bit of pride in seeing them bloom and grow!

If you'll permit me to get a bit philosophical for a brief moment, I've found that shopping for cactus has also been a real lesson in acceptance. There are over a thousand different types of cactus (and judging by the way they've been exploding all over Instagram lately, I wouldn't be surprised if people start to create new species soon), and they are all so incredibly different... and really... aren't people like that, too?